The KGB just changed it’s name, but that’s it. They’re still there. You know what happened with the Soviet Union? Only one thing – those in control realized that there was a better way to do it. Nobody overthrew anything. Ronald Reagan finished wearing them down, but they had long since realized their way was a loser. They’re just trying something new.

NEW YORK (WABC) — The Justice Department says 10 Russian intelligence officers have been arrested for allegedly serving as illegal agents of the Russian government in the United States.

Five of the 10 people arrested are from New York and New Jersey.

The Department of Justice says Richard and “Cynthia Murphy were arrested Sunday by FBI agents at their residence in Montclair, N.J., and are expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan today.

Vicky Pelaez and the a defendant known as Juan Lazaro were arrested Sunday at their residence in Yonkers, N.Y., and are expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan today. Anna Chapman was arrested in Manhattan yesterday and is expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan today.

Filed under – DUH! Of course it’s a right you idiots. You know, I would imagine if the Constitution was required reading in this country people might not have to go all the way to the Supreme Court to figure this out. I mean really, I knew it in elementary school the first time they went over it with me.

The Supreme Court ruled for the first time Monday that the Second Amendment provides all Americans a fundamental right to bear arms, a long-sought victory for gun rights advocates who have chafed at federal, state and local efforts to restrict gun ownership.

The court was considering a restrictive handgun law in Chicago and one of its suburbs that was similar to the District law that it ruled against in 2008. The 5 to 4 decision does not strike any other gun control measures currently in place, but it provides a legal basis for challenges across the country where gun owners think that government has been too restrictive.

“It is clear that the Framers . . . counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the conservatives on the court.

Sure, we’ll hire more people and send in the Guard and stuff. And by that he means hire more people but cut back on the total numbers of hours worked, which cancels out the effect of the new people, and say he will send in the Guard without actually doing it. But hey, it’s on paper and he can always say he wanted to but there was some evil plan to prevent him.

The blatant nature of this scam they are running – and I don’t just mean immigration – is truly frightening.

The U.S. Border Patrol has quietly reduced its current force of available agents along the U.S.-Mexico border by cutting the overtime hours they can work even as the Obama administration is asking Congress for hundreds of millions of dollars to hire 1,000 new agents, and Congress and the public are clamoring for beefed-up border security.

Several rank-and-file and senior agents told The Washington Times that a new overtime directive issued at the agency’s Washington headquarters will limit their ability to get their jobs done, reduce coverage during peak smuggling periods and allow more criminals to avoid apprehension.

“By lowering the statutory overtime cap nearly 15 percent through the current administrative restrictions, top-level managers in the Border Patrol are depriving Americans of desperately needed coverage along the border at a time of national crisis,” said T.J. Bonner, a veteran agent who heads the National Border Patrol Council, which represents all 15,000 of the agency’s nonsupervisory agents.

Because of the nature of the job, most Border Patrol agents average at least two hours overtime a day and the agency, as part of its ongoing recruitment effort, has promised what it called an “excellent opportunity for overtime pay.” The overtime cutback comes at a time that violence against the agents, according to Department of Homeland Security records, is up 31 percent this fiscal year.

All about politics – they just want to find a way to demonize and distance themselves from oil.

The panel appointed by President Barack Obama to investigate the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is short on technical expertise but long on talking publicly about “America’s addiction to oil.” One member has blogged about it regularly.

Only one of the seven commissioners, the dean of Harvard’s engineering and applied sciences school, has a prominent engineering background — but it’s in optics and physics. Another is an environmental scientist with expertise in coastal areas and the after-effects of oil spills. Both are praised by other scientists.

The five other commissioners are experts in policy and management.

The White House said the commission will focus on the government’s “too cozy” relationship with the oil industry. A presidential spokesman said panel members will “consult the best minds and subject matter experts” as they do their work.

The commission has yet to meet, yet some panel members had made their views known

Environmental activist Frances Beinecke on May 27 blogged: “We can blame BP for the disaster and we should. We can blame lack of adequate government oversight for the disaster and we should. But in the end, we also must place the blame where it originated: America’s addiction to oil.”

And on June 3, May 27, May 22, May 18, May 4, she called for bans on drilling offshore and the Arctic.

“Even as questions persist, there is one thing I know for certain: the Gulf oil spill isn’t just an accident. It’s the result of a failed energy policy,” Beinecke wrote on May 20.

Two other commissioners also have gone public to urge bans on drilling.

In the original photograph the war leader has his cigar gripped firmly in the corner of his mouth.

But in the other image – currently greeting visitors to a London museum – his favourite smoke has been digitally extinguished.
Uniform, victory salute and cigar: Winston Churchill in the 1940s and now without his trademark smoke

It seems the man who steered Britain through the most dangerous period of its recent history may have fallen victim to the modern curse of political correctness.

And yes, if you read that they waited between 3 months to 2 years to report this you are reading correctly. Wow. Glad they’re on the lookout for possible security situations in the old homeland right? Gotta move fast and all…

U.S. Air Force

FILE: Air traffic controllers from the 37th Operations Support Squadron prepare to navigate F-16 Falcons down the runway on Lackland Air Force Base.

A nationwide alert has been issued for 17 members of the Afghan military who have gone AWOL from a Texas Air Force base where foreign military officers who are training to become pilots are taught English, FoxNews.com has learned.

The Afghan officers and enlisted men have security badges that give them access to secure U.S. defense installations, according to the lookout bulletin, “Afghan Military Deserters in CONUS [Continental U.S.],” issued by Naval Criminal Investigative Service in Dallas, and obtained by FoxNews.com.

The Afghans were attending the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The DLI program teaches English to military pilot candidates and other air force prospects from foreign countries allied with the U.S.

“I can confirm that 17 have gone missing from the Defense Language Institute,” said Gary Emery, Chief of Public Affairs, 37th Training Wing, at Lackland AFB. “They disappeared over the course of the last two years, and none in the last three months.”

Each Afghan was issued a Department of Defense Common Access Card, an identification card used to gain access to secure military installations, with which they “could attempt to enter DOD installations,” according to the bulletin. Base security officers were encouraged to disseminate the bulletin to their personnel.

“The visas issued to these personnel have been revoked, or are in the process of being revoked. Lookouts have been placed in TECS,” it reads.

Idiots! They stopped cleanup operations on all barges to inspect them for life jackets! Seriously? What morons.

Sixteen barges sat stationary today, although they were sucking up thousands of gallons of BP’s oil as recently as Tuesday. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk.

“These barges work. You’ve seen them work. You’ve seen them suck oil out of the water,” said Jindal.

So why stop now?

“The Coast Guard came and shut them down,” Jindal said. “You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, ‘Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil.'”

A Coast Guard representative told ABC News today that it shares the same goal as the governor.

“We are all in this together. The enemy is the oil,” said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dan Lauer.

But the Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.

Yes, there are places in the United States where it is too dangerous for citizens to go. These areas for all intents and purposes belong to drug cartels and human traffickers. And yes, the tree-huggers are keeping the border patrol on horseback so they don’t step on a cactus or something. Pathetic.

Federal environmental laws are handcuffing U.S. Border Patrol agents to a foot-and-horseback strategy as they try to battle Mexican drug cartels and illegal immigrants who are turning wide swaths of America’s border with Mexico into a virtual no-man’s land.

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, ranking Republican on the House Parks and Public Lands Subcommittee, said the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in southern Arizona — part of which was closed in 2006 because it was considered too dangerous for Americans to visit — is just the tip of the iceberg.

He said there’s plenty of other parkland along the border that’s either closed to the public or is considered too dangerous because of concern about drug gangs, human smugglers and illegal immigrants, and that the problem is getting worse.

The reason the parkland along the border has become so hazardous, Bishop said, is because environmental regulations restrict Border Patrol from using vehicles to patrol in those areas — except in special circumstances. In turn, he said, drug cartels are being funneled into those swaths as immigration agents get tougher patrolling private land.

“It’s intensifying,” Bishop said. The Utah Republican is the author of a bill, H.R. 5016, that would allow border agents to patrol parkland without worrying about the environmental restrictions. He described that bill as the solution to the problem.

“They’re not allowing the Border Patrol to do the job that they know they need to do,” he said.

The fed has no business doing that, unless they can do it for free somehow. And as we all learned in Econ 101, there is no such thing as free!

Spending on biking and walking projects rose from less than $600 million (£407 million) in 2008, according to the Federal Highway Administraion. Twenty years ago, the federal government was spending only $6 million a year on such projects.

The spending on biking and walking projects was scheduled to rise last year anyway, but the administration boosted it with $400 million in funds set aside under the economic recovery program.

The new focus on biking and walking represents a turnaround from the administration of President George W Bush. Mary Peters, transportation secretary under Bush, dismissed biking paths and trails as projects that “really are not transportation,” saying they had no place in federal transportation policy.

In March, Mr Obama’s transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, announced a policy “sea change” that gives biking and walking projects the same importance as automobiles in transportation planning and the selection of projects for federal money.

Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of Obama’s Federal Trade Commission, is at the epicenter of a quiet movement to subsidize news organizations, a first step toward government control of the media. In our book, 2010: Take Back America — A Battle Plan, we reported that he had commissioned a study to examine plans for a federal subsidy for news organizations. Among the measures under consideration are special tax treatment, exemption from antitrust laws and changes in copyright laws.

Now Leibowitz has begun to pounce. A May 24 working paper on “reinventing” the media proposes that the government impose fees on websites such as the Drudge Report that link to news websites or that it tax consumer electronics such as iPads, laptops and Kindles. Funds raised by these levies would be redistributed to traditional media outlets.

Wow. That’s serious dedication. Concert in town? Tee time? See my previous post about Obama confusing the office of President of the United States with a foreign head of state. Guess what, O? You have to actually work, not just take pictures and talk.

June 16 (Reuters) – A White House meeting between Obama administration officials and executives at BP Plc (BP.L) (BP.N) went longer than expected on Wednesday as the two sides wrangled the company’s response to the oil spill.

Earlier BP and the White House reached a preliminary agreement for the London-based company to put some $20 billion into an escrow account to cover damage claims from the massive Gulf of Mexico spill.

According to a White House schedule, President Barack Obama was slated to attend the meeting for roughly 20 minutes starting at 10:15 a.m. The meeting was still going — though the president had long left — several hours later.

Secretary of State Clinton included the U.S. for the first time on the State Department’s list of nations “trafficking in persons” for forced labor ranging from farm workers to pole dancers and prostitutes.

“There are Americans, unfortunately, who are held in slavery,” Clinton said in releasing the annual report on nations who promote or permit the international trade in human beings for profit.

The report said the main source countries for forced labor in the U.S. were Thailand, Mexico, the Philippines, Haiti and India.

“The obvious reality is that we, too, are a source country,” said Luis C. de Baca, ambassador-at-Large for trafficking in persons.

In the report, the U.S. was singled out as “source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor, debt bondage, and forced prostitution.”

Red yeast rice (RYR), a product made from cultivating rice with the mold Monascus purpureus, has been used in China for centuries to treat circulatory and digestive disorders – and apparently without a bit of controversy. RYR has been in use in the U.S. for a much shorter period of time (as a non-prescription cholesterol-lowering supplement), and has generated lots of controversy.
The Controversy and Confusion Over RYR

The controversy began in 1999, shortly after clinical trials first showed that RYR could indeed significantly lower cholesterol levels. At that time it came to the attention of the FDA that RYR’s effectiveness is related to the fact that it contains a naturally-occurring form of the statin drug lovastatin (marketed as Mevacor). So the FDA ruled that RYR was a regulable drug, and thus ordered it removed it from the shelves.

This FDA decision was initially overruled by the District Court of Utah in 1999, but in 2000 the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the FDA that RYR could be regulated. So RYR could still be sold legally in the U.S., but only if steps were taken in its manufacturing process to remove the lovastatin (presumably eliminating its effectiveness).

Then, in 2007, the FDA found that at least some RYR in the U.S. still contained lovastatin, and (after issuing a formal FDA Consumer Safety Alert) took further steps to purge the “tainted” products from the shelves.

Currently, as far as the FDA is concerned, the RYR that you can buy in the U.S. contains no lovastatin. But otherwise, RYR is still considered a dietary supplement, so its formulation and content is still not regulated — and it is very difficult if not impossible to find out what it does contain. (This is the case with any unregulated dietary supplement.)

Whatever the intent (and I am suspicious), the devil is in the details. Even if this is perfectly legit now, it inevitably will not be in the future. This is an abuse waiting to happen. That’s the problem with people today. “But it seems like such a good idea!” It ALWAYS seems like a good idea. But try and think long term, shall we?

The online Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders says “behavior modification,” a controversial psychological treatment, can be accomplished through positive reinforcement or “punishment” – and now President Obama has signed an executive order specifying the treatment for all Americans, to be prescribed by government bureaucrats.

Obama’s order appoints members to a new government committee set up by the Democrats’ new health law that will evaluate, make recommendations about and establish rules for everything from how people exercise to whether they smoke to the food they eat and the medicines they use. And it specifically requires the committee list the priorities for “lifestyle behavior modification” that the government will pursue.

The encyclopedia report describes “punishment” as “the application of an aversive or unpleasant stimulus in reaction to a particular behavior.” Two experts who reviewed the president’s June 10 executive order establishing the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council say the plan easily could encompass exactly that.

Herb Titus, a veteran constitutional expert and lawyer, told WND, “The council is designed to basically implement future policy that ultimately everything will be governed by federal authorities, from food to dietary supplements to vitamins.”

[…]

The council’s membership, including the chiefs of the Agriculture, Labor, Health and Human Services, Transportation, Education and Homeland Security departments as well as the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Trade Commission, National Drug Control Police, Domestic Policy Council, Corporation for National and Community Service and others, also is alarming, Titus noted.

Most of those positions have no qualifications for making decisions about health care, so what would be their involvement, wondered Titus.

Could it be that non-compliance will bring down the wrath of those agencies?

[…]

The council then will have to report to the president on what it has done, what progress has been made and provide a “list of national priorities on health promotion and disease prevention to address lifestyle behavior modification (including smoking cessation, proper nutrition, appropriate exercise, mental health, behavioral health, substance-use disorder, and domestic violence screenings) and the prevention measures.”

That paragraph alone raised eyebrows for those wondering what the government would do to demand “lifestyle behavior modification.” It also raised concerns over its reference to “domestic violence screenings” as well as “mental health.”

The order also targets most of the products that are promoted as natural supplements or remedies, demanding that all “prevention programs” be based on the “science” guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control, virtually eliminating anything that is not put through the multi-million dollar tests required of the federal agency.

Asked a blogger at Techimo.com, “Is this something we need to worry about? Is (sic) Obama and his ‘advisers’ attempting to modify our behavior through legislation?”

It wasn’t supposed to happen in England, with all its very strict gun control laws. And yet last week Derrick Bird shot and killed 12 people and wounded 11 others. A headline in The Times of London read: “Toughest laws in the world could not stop Cumbria tragedy.”

Multiple victim public shootings were assumed to be an American thing for it is here the guns are, right? No, not at all. Contrary to public perception, Western Europe, where most countries have much tougher gun laws, has experienced many of the worst multiple victim public shootings. Particularly telling, all the multiple victim public shootings in Europe occurred where guns are banned. So it is in the United States, too — all the multiple victim public shootings (where more than three people have been killed) have taken place where civilians are not allowed to have a gun.

Look at recent history. Where have the worst K-12 school shootings occurred? It has not been in the U.S. but Europe. The very worst one occurred in a high school in Erfurt, Germany in 2002, where 18 were killed. The second worst took place in Dunblane, Scotland in 1996, where 16 kindergarteners and their teacher were shot. The third worst high school attack, with 15 murdered, happened in Winnenden, Germany. The fourth worst shooting was in the U.S. — Columbine High School in 1999, leaving 13 killed. The fifth worst school related murder spree, with 11 murdered, occurred in Emsdetten, Germany.

When Obama says “disclose,” what he really means is “disclose gun group membership lists.”

Not surprisingly, these efforts to shut down free speech don’t apply to Obama allies, like Democratic-leaning labor unions. They only apply to groups which are not reliable Obama allies, like Gun Owners of America.

But, for those groups whose free speech is targeted for Obama’s wrath under this bill, the consequences are severe:

* Under Title II of the bill, GOA (and other groups, as well as many bloggers) who merely mention public officials within 60 days of an election could be required to file onerous disclosures — potentially including their membership lists.

* Also under Title II, GOA could be required to spend as much as half of the time of a 30-second ad on government-written disclosures.

* In addition, Sections 201 through 203 would potentially put the government’s snooping eyes on any American who voices a political opinion, despite the fact that the Supreme Court, in Buckley v. Valeo, declared that Americans have a right to voice their opinion to an unlimited extent, if unconnected with a political campaign.

Here’s an idea: If Obama is so irritated at the Supreme Court’s defense of political free speech by groups like GOA, why doesn’t he apply his sleazy new rules to his political allies, as well?

ACTION: Please urge your congressman to vote against the anti-gun HR 5175. This bill has moved out of committee and has now been placed on the House calendar.

I bet you knew before you read this didn’t you? Yep, it was the Obama people.

The case is straightforward. On Election Day 2008, two members of the New Black Panther party (NBPP) dressed in military garb were captured on videotape at a Philadelphia polling place spouting racial epithets and menacing voters. One, Minister King Samir Shabazz, wielded a nightstick. It was a textbook case of voter intimidation and clearly covered under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

A Department of Justice trial team was assigned to investigate. They gathered affidavits from witnesses—one of the poll watchers was called a “white devil” and a “cracker.” A Panther told him he would be “ruled by the black man.” The trial team, all career Justice attorneys and headed by voting section chief Chris Coates, filed a case against the two Panthers caught on tape. Malik Zulu Shabazz, head of the national NBPP, and the party itself were also named based on evidence the party had planned the deployment of 300 members on Election Day and on statements after the incident in which the NBPP endorsed the intimidation at the Philadelphia polling station.

The trial team quickly obtained a default judgment—meaning it had won the case because the New Black Panther party failed to defend itself. Yet in May 2009, Obama Justice Department lawyers, appointed temporarily to fill top positions in the civil rights division, ordered the case against the NBPP dismissed. An administration that has pledged itself to stepping-up civil rights enforcement dropped the case and, for over a year, has prevented the trial team lawyers from telling their story.

Check out the agenda for Bilderberg 2010: “Financial reform, security, cyber technology, energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, world food problem, global cooling, social networking, medical science, EU-US relations.” That list is a window into your future. Don’t think for one minute that it isn’t. And don’t ignore it, because it isn’t ignoring you.

I love how “social networking” must fry the Bilderbergian mind. On the one hand, as Zuckerberg of Facebook says, privacy is no longer a social norm so it’s okay to milk the networking sites for information, social trends and dissident thinking; however, you can’t stop the people from arranging a meet-up to discuss internet censorship or the rights and wrongs of “global cooling”. Speaking of which, Bill Gates (Bilderberg 2010) is funding “cloud whitening” technology; trials start soon. Global dimming isn’t just something that happens every time Big Brother starts. On the basis of this agenda, I think we can expect a lot of statements about cutting-edge cloud-technology trials in the next 12 months. If it works in Dubai, it can work in Britain too…